Travel Light
by BandGeek58407
Summary: The last hours of anything are the hardest, and House's life is no exception, especially when Wilson is mysteriously missing from his best friend's deathbed. Character death, obviously. H/W


**A/N: A possible direction for the series finale. Both of the quotes at the beginning and end are from **_**The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao **_**by Junot Diaz, which is an awesome book. You should read it. Also, rating is for language.**

X-X

"_Some Advice_

_Travel light. She extended her arms to embrace her house, maybe the whole world." _

X-X

He stands on the edge of a cliff, teetering precariously as his toes prod the vertical face. Before him the sea continues on as it always has for centuries, and now, after all those centuries, Wilson wishes he possessed the power to halt the cycle, if only for a moment—because it only makes sense that Mother Nature acknowledge the demise of her greatest physician.

Gregory House is dying, and Wilson is far from Princeton's borders.

He has no idea why.

Or maybe it's that he does, and he would rather just go on pretending: if he never returns to the hospital, he won't ever have to accept the truth. In the back—forefront even—of his mind, he knows that's silly.

It didn't work too well last time.

X-X

Of the many doctors, nurses, and the like at Princeton-Plainsboro, there are only five at his deathbed, five who fit into both categories of those who can and those who care. Crowds push through bustling hallways, halfway peering into the room with glass walls, beeping monitors, and a foreboding pall. The slight frame hardly shows beneath the sheets until he stirs and the four flanking the bed jump, then settle.

It's nothing—and they can do nothing.

Cuddy—the fifth—doesn't bother being diplomatic when she barges her way in, and no stern words fly from her lips. Behind her, just past the door, two nurses wonder if they should have told her that her mascara is running.

The four turn when she enters, waiting for—too many things.

"Well?" Chase probes. "What did the transplant committee say?"

All she can manage is a weak shake of the head.

"And I can't find Wilson," she adds softly, the words sending Cameron's hands to dial cell, pager, whatever she can find.

"I saw him earlier today," Taub says, clearly confused.

Foreman pays the scene no mind, boring his thoughts like daggers into House's slumbering, pained face. A glance at the clock, and the rest realize the neurologist hasn't budged in two hours. They wonder what he sees.

X-X

When his cell phone rings, Wilson compulsively chucks it into the breakers. He exhales deeply at the sound of the splash and reaches into his pocket.

An orange vial of Vicodin.

Hands quivering, he unscrews the cap—white pills spill into his palm, eight of them. Before he realizes it, one is sliding down his throat—later he tells himself he needed it, because, after all, isn't this pain?—and the others soon follow the path of his phone.

"Why…" Two.

"…is it…" Three.

"…always…" Four.

"…HIM?" Five, brute force almost sending him over the edge.

"DAMMIT!" Six.

"FUCKING PILLS!" Seven.

Silence again as he catches his breath, the eighth lolling around lazily in his hand. This script, this was House's last, the last of many bottles to be graced with his name.

While the reality tries to sink in, the final Vicodin sinks into his inside jacket pocket, zipped up, always safe and, more importantly, close.

Even in the beginning haze of the meds, a choked sob laces the misty air.

X-X

"Where _is _he?" Cameron sighs. "Of all the people…"

"Maybe he stepped out and didn't get the message," offers Taub, and suddenly the room is alight with outbursts.

"He'd be back from lunch by now."

"The entire hospital knows; he can't possibly stay out of the loop _that_ long!"

"Maybe he's in emergency surgery."

"Already checked."

"He knows." They're the first words Foreman has said since he began the vigil, and they command immediate attention. "When House was admitted, I went to Wilson's office to tell him personally."

Not another sound penetrates their thoughts, save for the monitor, or the occasional moan from the bed. But they try not to think about it.

X-X

He's crawled back to the ledge with legs dangling in the air, with eyes and heart turned toward the sky. By now, there is nothing left to run down his cheeks, and, at the sight of his shuddering, the few tourists admiring the view quickly scatter.

He thinks back to when he first jumped in the car. Drizzle fell from the clouds and even in the neighborhoods he was driving eighty miles per hour—but he didn't care. He _wanted _the cops to pull him over; he _wanted_ to be bailed out of jail. And when he thinks to the terrible, brief exchange when his phone wasn't fish bait—

"Wilson?" Stacy's voice rang clear despite the bad signal.

"You did this."

Click. And he knows it's a lie—everybody lies, don't they?—because truthfully, he's only blaming himself. Day after day, he wrote House the Vicodin scripts.

Day after day, he served him a heaping spoonful of jaundice.

So shouldn't he be draped in black robes, wielding a silver sickle?

He still sits there, moaning, and with every second that passes, he hates himself even more.

X-X

"You…idiots…"

Their heads snap to attention at the raspy sound.

"Go get…Wilson…"

X-X

With his face buried in his arms, Wilson doesn't notice his visitor approach and take a seat beside him.

"Why are you so sad?"

Sniffling, he shoots her a red-rimmed eye—what a small girl, six at the oldest, her blonde hair bobbing thoughtfully in tight curls. Maybe if he stays silent long enough, she'll leave.

Or not.

"Why are you so sad?" she repeats, and in the distance, he can see her parents.

Slowly he sighs and faces the sea—her eyes are too familiar. "My best friend is dying."

He catches her scanning the rocky expanse behind them and even peering uncertainly into the waves below. "Is he here?"

"No," he replies after a pause.

"Then why are you?"

X-X

"House…" Carefully Cuddy maneuvers to his bedside, to Chase's spot, and rests a hand on the diagnostician's bony shoulder. "Your liver has failed."

He coughs, but barely, sounding as weak as he appears. "No shit Sherlock…" As he tries to catch his breath again, her hand falls back to her side. "None of you…will look me…in the eyes…so…"—another cough—"there must be…something…you don't want to see…like jaundice."

At the eleventh hour on his final knee, his genius is _still_ careening forward, and even after all these years it _still _amazes them.

"No…transplant?"

"No," Taub says simply.

"Where's…Wilson?"

"We're trying," Cameron sighs absently, fingers strumming her open cell phone.

And then a pause, deep breath, somewhat ragged—"What the hell does that even mean?"

X-X

As he drives back to Princeton with the needle of the speedometer hovering around ninety-five, he hopes again that he gets caught. He hopes he glimpses bright red and blue lights in the rearview mirror. But this time, he doesn't want to be pulled over, not at all.

He's in the mood for a car chase.

Because maybe if he's running from them, it means he has a place to run to, a destination, a purpose.

That's it—a purpose.

His eyes burn with a raw desire for meaning in this chaos, any meaning, any at all that could just halt the progress of time. How hopeful. How unrealistic.

So he presses the gas harder, the needle reaching one hundred and ten. There's something to be said for speed flashing around the windshield and death drifting on the horizon.

X-X

Over the last hour, they watched his vitals decline and his protests strengthen against the frailty in his voice.

"Goddammit, why can't you find him?" he whispers in a growl. "It's not…that hard…"

Chase and Cameron watch him helplessly as Cuddy, Foreman, and Taub gather in a far-off corner.

"It won't be pretty," Foreman murmurs, "but we owe it to her."

"The last time that I went in to say hello she screamed at me," Taub says, but he knows it was the Huntington's doing the screaming. "Do you want to put her through this?"

In seconds the debate fades as they pass the choice to the future. It's so much easier to wait.

X-X

The hospital looms like the gates to somewhere Wilson has only seen in his dreams—and nightmares.

And to his own skin, his actions feel surreal.

X-X

When he bursts in the room, any planned reprimandings shrivel on their tongues—not since Amber have they seen him like this, so frenzied and crumpled that just looking at him pulls at their own composure.

He says nothing to them, falling into the seat Foreman had occupied for hours. Blotches appear on the bed sheets, and they know Wilson is the source of the rain; the wind in his fingers breezes through House's messy head of hair, and unexpectedly the gesture isn't rejected.

"Oh God, House"—the voice is shaking. Hesitantly Cuddy takes a step toward them, but Taub stops her, shaking his head.

"Don't get all blubbery on me, Wilson," House mumbles. "It doesn't suit you."

Wilson can't form coherent sentences, but the others note how vigor has returned to House's speech.

"I'm dying, like everybody does, like you will someday, and we've all known it was going to happen. And you've incapacitated yourself, let me go through the big questions for you: is the world a better place because of me? I don't know—"

"Yes." They lock gazes. "Yes," Wilson repeats, with a nod this time.

"I can think of at least fifty people who would argue otherwise."

"They don't know you like I do. They don't—" And he stops suddenly, quite surprised at where his mouth was going without his brain's knowledge, wherever that is. "They don't matter," he finally settles on.

"Tell that to _them_."

"Maybe I will." Wilson's hand falls in a gentle arc to his cheek, and all at once his voice takes on a more distinct quaver. "You will always be the best thing that's ever happened to me."

Sickly yellow eyes blink slowly, pensively, watching the browns above drown. "Wilson…that's—"

"—the truest thing I've ever said." His other hand swoops to House's bare cheek, and there's barely a second before he's pressing their lips together chastely, so affectionately that it keeps the others' shock at bay.

The kiss doesn't last long; they can tell Wilson is about to fall apart. And no sooner does a gap appear between them does he rush away, a deluge raging across his face and into his heart.

No one dares to speak, eyeing his vitals as they resume the descent—now it's much faster, but House doesn't seem to mind. His thoughtful gaze is aimed up to the ceiling, and he almost looks confused, bewildered maybe, but amazement is lurking around the edges.

"Is that…really…all it took?" he rasps.

X-X

Wilson swallows another sob as he lands in House's office chair, grasping desperately at the lupus textbook, a treasure chest. A hidden bottle full to the brim with Vicodin falls into his hand and he can't wait to force it through his blood. If he can't have House, this is the next best thing.

The only difference between House and Vicodin, at the moment at least, is life and death. It's that simple.

X-X

"What do you mean?" Cuddy asks delicately. "All it took to what?"

His breathing has slowed, so they assume the tiny hitch is something akin to a chuckle, flickering his drooping eyelids open for one last moment. "…to make me happy…"

From the corner, the monitor drones a single long tone. No soul wants to admit it, and they wait in silence until the minute is almost over.

"Time of death…"

X-X

He never knew if it was the Vicodin high or the starkest sight of truth, but looking out on Princeton from the office balcony later that night, Wilson swore he saw House dancing with angels.

X-X

"_So this is what everybody's always talking about! Diablo! If only I'd known. The beauty! The beauty!"_


End file.
